The ramblings of a UX design student in Brighton

Leading Design 2017 was my first experience of a Clearleft conference and I had high expectations. As a team with such a sharp focus on quality, I knew the Clearlefties would hold the bar high for themselves to deliver a world-class event, but I didn’t realise just how high. The speaker line-up for the two… Read More Behind the scenes at Leading Design 2017

It’s my final week at Clearleft and my project is on the verge of submission. I can’t believe how fast the last 12 weeks – make that 12 months – have flown by. It’s been an amazing voyage of discovery, in learning a new craft and in discovering what I’m capable of. I’ve been pleasantly… Read More Week 12 @ Clearleft

My penultimate week at Clearleft, and I’m back doing a Virgin Holidays sprint. My experience here has come full circle, but I feel much more confident this time around. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to completely immerse myself in the Virgin sprint this time, as I’m so close to my final deadline for my major project.… Read More Week 11 @ Clearleft

This week I got stuck into user testing, which yielded some interesting results. I managed to get three members of the UX team to spare some time and got really valuable pointers from them. I used their feedback to refine my designs and knocked them up into wireframes, a selection of which you can see… Read More Week 10 @ Clearleft

This week I’ve spent quite a bit of time mapping out and sketching the paper prototypes for my toolkit design. There have been plenty of challenges along the way, so I’ve been doing more than my fair share of chin stroking and head-scratching. I’ve sent numerous rough scribbles bin-wards, but I’ve ended up with a… Read More Week 9 @ Clearleft

8 weeks down, only 4 more to go! This week I felt like I was really getting stuck into the project and starting to hone in on some key areas. I moved from the Discover phase to the Define phase and spent a lot of time thinking about the information architecture. I got to know… Read More Week 8 @ Clearleft

And just like that another week whizzed past. We kicked off the week by meeting with the BBC guys to wrap up the sprint with them. They seemed pleased with the work that we had produced and the findings from the user testing. It’s been fascinating to learn more about how the BBC operates and… Read More Week 7 @ Clearleft

This week has been back in the thick of it with a one-week sprint with the BBC. The project brief is around creating a survey interface to enable the Beeb to run scientific experiments. They are planning a project called about mental health later this year, which will take the temperature of the UK public,… Read More Week 6 @ Clearleft

This week has been a little less intense than the last three, giving me some time to write up the work we did with the Virgin team. Going back over it reminds me how much we crammed into those three weeks. It’s been interesting to reflect on the role that each stage in the process… Read More Week 5 @ Clearleft

The final week of our design sprint was all about refining and polishing our ideas and testing them with users. My first task was to develop the profile page wireframe I’d created last week and reformat it for a smartphone screen. One of the first elements I started thinking about was how to split it… Read More Week 4 @ Clearleft

So then I blinked and week three was over, how did that happen? We started the week by critiquing our sketches from Friday and voting on our favourites with blue dots. We then discussed the elements we liked and summarised them into these categories: Moods/presets (almost like playlists) Maps Open search (allowing open text search)… Read More Week 3 @ Clearleft

Week 2 saw the start of our three-week design sprint with the Virgin Holidays team. We started by introducing ourselves, chatting about the project goals and sharing background information. The focus of the project is on ‘experiences’, which can be interpreted in a few ways. The essence of it is to focus on the experience… Read More Week 2 @ Clearleft

I have to admit, I was a little nervous as I walked towards the Clearleft office on day one of my 12-week placement. Will they like me? Will I like them? Will I be good enough? Will I embarrass myself terribly? These were just a few of the questions rattling around my brain. They are… Read More Week 1 @ Clearleft

That’s it, finito. My project is complete and I’m on the verge of submitting it. I can’t believe I’ve made it to this point without being carted off by men in white coats. This project has pushed my patience and tenacity to the brink, but I’ve got through. Now I just have to cross everything… Read More 16: Done and dusted

The finish line is looming so I’ve been busy putting the final polish on my site. As per Marcus’ request I’ve taken out all the <br> tags and replaced as many of the <div> tags as I can muster, as well as getting rid of any superfluous code I can find. I used the elements index… Read More 15: The home straight(jacket)

Here’s a great example of getting one thing working only to break another: I managed to implement an iframe to pull in Google Maps but this knocked my contact form off into a strange position. I tried changing the widths of all form elements and played with the margins and padding but it didn’t make any difference. Just for fun the footer… Read More 14: iFrame it on me

We’re getting close to the deadline now and I’m feeling fairly confident that I will get everything I want to done in time. I’ve really enjoyed working on this project and seeing my design take shape. Once I got stuck into the wireframing I realised it wasn’t so scary after all. I actually think I did… Read More Interaction design 10

So it doesn’t look like huge progress from last week but once again it’s taken a bloody long time to get this far. I really hope I can get this done in time, I’m starting to sweat a bit now – only two weeks! In the last week I spent a lot of time working… Read More 13: Troubleshooting (myself in the foot)

I’ve managed to progress my website a bit further since my last blog but it feels like it’s progressing at a snail’s pace. Each tiny correction takes me hours to work out and I’ll often find I’ve broken something else in the process. I’ve found some answers and assistance on Stack Overflow and WebPlatform.org, like adding… Read More 12: Float:left like a butterfly

This week I’ve been feeling like I’m running out of time, but at the same time not quite having the required skills to actually do the job I’ve been tasked with. It’s a frustrating mix, but I’ve ploughed on all the same and am starting to produce something that vaguely resembles my design (if you squint).… Read More 11: On a wonk